Obama's Egypt coup conundrum

The United States is treating Egypt’s summer revolution as a coup — even if the White House won’t call it that.

It’s the only-a-lawyer-could-love approach the Obama administration has settled on taking toward the thorny question of whether some aid to the country must be cut off by law because of the military’s role in toppling elected President Mohamed Morsi in July.

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“Consistent with the law, we will only provide assistance to Egypt that could be provided regardless of whether the military coup restriction has been triggered,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan. “We will continue to work with the Congress to ensure we obtain the funding and authorities necessary to provide assistance for Egypt in FY 2014 consistent with the approach we have outlined.”

But in Congress, there are deep concerns that President Barack Obama is sidestepping the law and setting a new precedent for denying aid to other countries in similar situations without making the critical determination that a coup occurred.

The phrase “consistent with the law” does not necessarily dictate that the White House believes the law compels a suspension of assistance, and the language mirrors the careful way in which the executive branch often complies with the tenets of a separate foreign policy dictum — the War Powers Act — without conceding that it is covered by the law

The coup question is quickly becoming a flashpoint over the foreign policy powers of the two branches of government, and it is being examined in greater depth because the administration is asking lawmakers to issue a waiver so that money for certain activities can still flow to Egypt.

All of it could come to a head in public when the House Foreign Affairs Committee holds an Egypt hearing with an as-yet-unnamed State Department official in the witness chair this Thursday.

In meetings on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, administration officials said they have decided not to disburse aid subject to a rider in the State Department Appropriations bill that seeks to halt aid after a coup.

Officials told lawmakers that the amount of aid either blocked or being treated as blocked by the law includes about $584 million in economic assistance. Military equipment, including M1A1 tanks, Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter aircraft — incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in storage costs — is also being withheld.

The discussion became particularly intense at a briefing for Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff on Thursday, to which the administration sent six briefers from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the office of the secretary of defense and the joint chiefs of staff.

The current rider “does not require a coup determination to apply,” one of the briefers said, according to a person present at the session. “Events on the ground dictate policy; this was not a discretionary decision.”

However, the source said administration officials would not say whether their policy on holding back aid just happened to be consistent with the law or was driven by the legal restriction. Pressed on the point, State Department Director of Foreign Assistance Rob Goldberg said he “wasn’t a lawyer” and didn’t want to wordsmith, the source said.

Obama has said that there are consequences for the Egyptian revolution, even as he has dodged the word “coup.”